A Day in the Life

So randomly this morning I decided y'all might want a look at what an average day around here looks like, although for some of you, it may be TMI. ;) The beauty of each day here is that they are never the same, regardless of planning and scheduling every day brings new opportunities and experiences.

Here's a look at a day in my life:

We adopted a kitten a few months ago. Bnaya still doesn't understand a proper morning greeting or that biting my feet while I'm on my way to make coffee is much more dangerous than biting my foot AFTER the coffee. 

Making a decent cup of coffee is quite a process around here, but we're so thankful to have good grains with which to make it! First, we filter the water (it's not really bad, just has a lot of calcium), then we heat the water in an AMAZING electric water heater thingy, and then we let it roast in the French press. In general, it's very delicious and very much worth the effort!

Today, Beth studied with the tutor, so I attempted to review on my own.  I ended up spending most of my time studying the Word instead, but I did take a picture of our lessons!

My desk window offers a very distracting vista. The Med is in the distance.

Hop in a taxi (this was the only one I remembered to take a picture of, but this is our main mode of transport so we do it a lot!)

Met Beth for lunch at one of the nicer restaurants in town.

Appetizer: Bread + dips (diced tomato dip, mayonnaise, harousa) and olives 

Beth's seafood dish and my delicious lasagna!

We ran a few other errands before English Club at our house. I forgot to take pictures  but we had several girls come today and we had lots of fun! We used these conversation questions to get started with the English practicing.

At 5, we walked to our Arabic class. The sun literally set on our way to class-it gets dark so early here!

Arabic class. I snapped a photo while our teacher stepped out for a moment.

Beth's feet are staying warm during Arabic class - it's nearly cooler inside than out! (Don't tell her I posted this! ;)

Leftovers for dinner: Beth's delicious stew!

Beth was getting all creative in the kitchen making Christmas goodies and I decided to come write to all of you.

So this is an idea of a "typical" day. It's just after 9 pm, we've just finished dinner and will probably try to watch a Christmas movie before turning in, but that's the basics. Today was a really good day, nothing crazy happened but we had lots of good conversations with new friends and that's always our favorite!

Grandpa's beard

Sometimes the adventure of learning a new language gives you a beautiful nugget of joy to treasure. For me it generally comes by the way of watching myself or someone else making a funny mistake, but then you sometimes you stumble upon a word that is just great all on it's own. Recently, while visiting friends in another city, we went to an amusement park kind of place (the word for this 'fair' is funny in it's own right because it sounds like the word for worm...kinda. Well, if you add a few consonants it does.) that had cotton candy. Here we learned that the word/phrase for cotton candy is  لحية متى جد (leHya mtaa jed) which literally translated means, "My grandfather's beard." For the first time ever, I enjoyed the language lesson more than the actual sweets! haha!

Enjoying 'my grandfather's beard" and ice cream with friends!

It was quite odd but the cotton candy was melting nearly as quick as the ice cream.

"Friends Night Out!"

Wound-licking good

Do you ever encounter moments in your life where you want to ask the Father, "Really? Do we really have to deal with this right now? Aren't you even gonna give me a few days to tend my wounded pride or lick my wounds?"

That was my first reaction this morning as Beth Moore led me into the Word to a sensitive issue that come to my (and everyone else in the room's) attention just last night. 

Let me explain.

We went to our landlord's house for dinner last night. To be honest, I didn't want to go in the first place because I just "don't click" with this lady. It probably has nothing to do with the day she said,"You've been studying Arabic for 5 months now and you don't speak it fluently?!"

Like I said, we just "don't click". Language learning happens to be a source of constant humiliation already without someone directly judging your progress with their broken English.

As we sat around chatting before the meal, we heard the same advice literally like 20 times, "You must practice Arabic with people to be good at it." This, of course, came after the interrogation of our schooling methods and on and on and on they went about learning the language. It would have been helpful the first time they mentioned, but by 437 millionth time, we were scrambling for a subject change. 

Politics and religion ought to do the trick. And it did, until we were talking after the (yes, I must admit) delicious meal. As I'm trying to construct a sentence in Arabic at 9:30 pm, this lady interrupts me and says, "[that person] speaks better Arabic than you." Followed by her whole family nodding in agreement. Now, I know this is surprising to you, but that didn't really help my "not clicking" or bonding with her issue much.

In an effort to regain some lost pride, I spoke only in English for the rest of the night. Beth was gracious to recount and make excuses for me, when we all know that what the lady said was true, just the way she said it wasn't kind. 

It was an icky situation because Beth and I have tried really, really hard not to make language learning a competition. But it's hard not to compare yourself to someone else when your landlord says something like "You suck at this thing you've been trying really hard at for 6 months" (So, she didn't say that, but that's what my heart felt like she said).

After we got home, I had started working through my feelings about the evening and had even asked Him to help me see her as He does. But it didn't take long for me to feel the need to watch tv and then read a book before bed; hence, leaving the things that needed to be dealt with for another time. 

Oh but no, Father's got to bring it up first thing this morning - in a study of James of all places.

In Galatians 2:1-10, we see several leaders trying to figure out how to work together.

Moore writes, "Stand back and watch how many observers will try to nudge you into a competition with someone who fills a similar slot. The idea is that anything comparable is automatically competitive." She goes on to discuss comparison traps and, of course, makes us like...I dunno...deal with it.

Insert moment of, "Really? Do we really have to deal with this right now? Aren't you even gonna give me a few days to tend my wounded pride or lick my wounds?"

Yet, He loves us too much to leave us where we are!

The beauty of our Father is that he uses us in our strengths but all the more in our weaknesses and that He judges us on our obedience, not our performance. 

Language Oops of the Week [2]

*disclaimer: this post not for the weak stomached ones.*


Yesterday, while practicing our Arabic in a Salon de The (similar to a coffee shop in the States, except here some of the "coffees" are for men only but Salon de The means both men and women can frequent) Beth wanted to ask the waiter for another cup of coffee. We know the words for "I want a cup of coffee" but not for "another." So our teacher quickly told her the word to say. So Beth thought she was saying, "I want another cup of coffee," but when everyone started laughing we realized something hadn't come out correctly. By pronouncing the word with an "ah" sound at the beginning instead of an "O" sound, she had actually said, "I want a cup of coffee go to the bathroom." This certainly justified all the laughter. Instead of asking for another cup of coffee, she had accidentally commanded the waiter to go to the bathroom. Some words we will certainly never forget.

Shek Shouka

Shek Shouka: A dish best served sparingly.


Shek Shouka is one of the first Arabic words I was able to commit to memory; partially because the meaning is so appropriate and mostly because I love the way it sounds. It's one of the few "easy" words to say in Arabic, and it's easy to "master" (I should probably discuss this idea of having mastered anything in Arabic with my teacher before saying that...). There are two meanings for the word in our country: a traditional dish and a mess of good things.


Even before we began our language study, friends had shared this word with us. They explained that sometimes, instead of referring to food, the phrase is used to express that things are kinda a mess or it's a bunch of good things all jumbled together. Since then, we have often used this word with our language teacher to express that we are learning a lot of good things but sometimes all the Arabic and English and Arabic verb tenses and Arabic culture and Arabic blessings just get jumbled up in our head.


We use the word so often in class that when I heard the word used while eating at a traditional restaurant, it felt out of context. But I quickly recovered from that slight shock and moved into a mini-celebration over having correctly heard and understood a word in Arabic! We celebrate the small victories over here.


"The Restaurant of the Lonely Woman," as it is literally translated, is quickly becoming one of my favorites. It is located in the heart of the medina (which is like the city within the city, surrounded by the old city walls that look like a castle. There is little room for cars, although a few motorcycles manage to get through the narrow old stone streets. The medina is definitely something you'll have to see when you come!) and we always attend with a group. Beth once compared it to going to Cpaw's. It's true that everyone comes in and goes behind the counter to see what's cooking on the stove and to hug the old ladies that cook. Some of our friends even bring their own bread because they don't like the bread that's served there. It's quite entertaining. We always eat traditional food there, in the traditional way (with your fingers or bread, and without napkins) and this last visit we finally got to try the shek shouka.

Shek Shouka! The first one is shek shouka wa lham (with meat) and the one with fries is shek shouka with veggies.

Interesting things to note in this picture: the bread on the table. This is a traditional bread they either call taboona or hobza khayel, I forget (my brain is a shek shouka after all). Either way, it is wonderful and I love it lots more than the more common skinny, hard bread that is easier to find. The shek shouka tasted a little like a marinara sauce you might use over spaghetti, that's about the only resemblance. I really loved mine, Beth wasn't so crazy about hers. The vegetable shek shouka also had a runny egg in it, so I think that might have something to do with her not loving it.


So this is shek shouka and this is what my brain feels like everyday after 4 hours of studying Arabic...a hot mess. =) Thankful that He can make something beautiful and useful out of something like this.

Language Oops of the Week [1]

From guest author: Beth


So, we were going to this production on Saturday in front of the court house-which turned out to start 2 hours later than supposed to be, but was surprisingly really good. Well, we had picked up some candied peanuts and after eating them were quite thirsty. We went to this little store that has just an open front. Kind of like a concession stand. We wanted a coke and had decided to share one. Since we were sharing, we wanted the bottle coke not the can. Well, there are NO lines whatsoever so everyone is just pressed against the counter and by the way the counter is right at our eye level. So, we finally make it to the front of the counter and are trying to put our money up there so that he will take our order, however, there are all these arm pits and hands reaching over us that are handing their money in and getting what they want. So, we decided that we just needed to speak up and say what we wanted. We know the word for coke, bottle, big, small. So I figured this would be easy. I could see the can cokes and the bottle cokes. Brandi first said coca daboose (bottle) and he brought this huge thing of water. We said La (no). Coca Cabirra (big). Well, he returned with a 2 liter!!! Oh, well. We walked around with the 2 liter the rest of the time. We almost drank it all in this 2 hours of waiting for the production to begin.